


to change, to choose

by thepensword



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Families of Choice, Found Family, Gen, Platonic Relationships, introspective, spoilers through ep 49
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 05:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17616638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepensword/pseuds/thepensword
Summary: Beauregard Lionett is dead and Just Beau has no family. But This-Beau, Beau-Now, has a family that she made herself and she wouldn’t trade them for the world.





	to change, to choose

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by that line about retiring in a beach house and then written over a course of a week before being completed and proofread and posted REALLY FAST IN THE FIVE MINUTES BEFORE EPISODE 50 STARTED so if there's typos.....im sorry

Beau never had a family.

Technically speaking, this isn’t true. Technically speaking, she has a mother and father and now, a little brother. Technically speaking, she has aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, and they’re all alive, and they raised her in their home.

Technically.

But technicalities don’t mean shit when your parents treat you the way Beau’s did. They’re not family when they look at you like dogshit on the bottom of their fancy-ass shoes. They’re not family when they hire people to kidnap you and take you off to monk school. Beau is eighteen years old and sulking in her tiny room after training one day, bruised and battered and uncomfortable on the hard mattress, when she realizes this.

 _I don’t have a family,_ she thinks. _I don’t have parents._

It’s comforting, in a strange way. Beau is her own person. She’s here to be learn badass monk skills, that’s all. She’s gonna learn how to punch people because that’s what she likes and that’s what she’s good at. No other reason. Beauregard Lionett is dead and Beau has no family, and that’s just how she likes it.

It stays like that for a while. She’s just Beauregard, just Beau, unattached. She punches people and fucks girls and never stays long. She steps out of monk school and the road stretches before her, and she takes off running without looking back. Who needs attachments? Who needs regrets? Certainly not Beau. She’s like the wind, she’ll think when she’s feeling particularly romantic. Free, like the wind. Nothing to tie her down. No family to keep her still.

Just Beau is all alone and that’s how she likes it. And then she meets Jester and Fjord.

They beat up a snake. They share a campsite. They travel the same road and watch each others’ backs. It’s a strictly professional relationship, at first, but together they end up in Trostenwald and together they pick up some more professional relations and suddenly they’re a whole party. Just-Beau becomes Beau-And-Jester-And-Fjord-And-Caleb-And-Nott-And-Molly-And-Yasha.

And then Beau-And-Jester-And-Fjord-And-Caleb-And-Nott-And-Molly-And-Yasha becomes the Mighty Nein. It doesn’t hit her immediately, but it’s been awhile since Beau’s been a part of anything like this. It’s been a while since she’s had people she felt she could trust.

One day, Caleb puts a hand on her shoulder as he looks through Frumpkin’s eyes, and she lets him. Not long ago, she would have pushed him aside, but now she lets him. And when he does it again, she puts her hand on his and holds him back. And he keeps doing it, and she keeps holding his hand, and pretty soon Beau realizes she’d die for this motherfucker.

She’d die for any of them. Without question.

It’s in the heat of battle when she realizes this. Caleb gets hit and goes down all at once, and Nott screams, and Beau’s vision goes red. Jester’s too far away to heal him, too busy trying to help Fjord and his stupid broken arm. And the monster is still right there, looming over Caleb.

Beau doesn’t think. She just moves. She’s not really the most durable, either, doesn’t have armor or anything, but she throws herself between the monster and Caleb with only her fists to arm her. She summons her chi and lowers her stance and thinks, _over my dead body._

“You’ll have to go through me, first,” she spits through bloodied lips. And she punches the monster in the face for all that she’s worth.

That night, they’re sitting around the campfire, bandaged and bruised but blissfully alive. Nott scoots up close to Beau and places something smooth and round into her hand.

“Thank you for saving him,” says Nott, voice quiet beneath the raucous conversation that Jester and Molly have forced everyone else to engage in. Beau looks down at her palm and sees a small blue button, the same color as the sash she wears around her waist.

Beau shrugs her shoulder uncomfortably and shakes her head like she might dislodge the uncomfortable feeling of belonging. Beau is tough. Beau is attached. She’s Just Beau and she doesn’t need things like friends.

“Yeah, no problem,” she says, and she means it. Nott smiles at her, all jagged goblin teeth and sad, grateful eyes, and then leaves to go curl up by Caleb’s side again. Beau watches her go and thinks about how she’d rather die than see any of these people hurt.

 _Okay,_ she thinks. _So I have friends now. Big deal._

She doesn’t let herself think about family.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s lonely and gray when Mollymauk Tealeaf draws his last breath. The world seems leached of color completely, every hint of vibrancy drawn inwards towards the still form in the outrageous coat. Beau kneels beside him, blood all over her hands, and thinks, _it should have been me._

He’d hate that. He’d tell her to keep going, no regrets. He’d never want her to throw her life before his. That’s why he died, isn’t it? Protecting her, making sure Lorenzo murdered him first.

Yeah, well, fuck him. _Fuck you, Mollymauk,_ thinks Beau. _Fuck you for making me care so goddamn much. Fuck you for dying._

She pulls the ribbon from her hair and wraps it around his wrist. She tears a strip of fabric from the sleeve of his coat and uses that tie her hair back up again. She swallows thickly around tears and bites down on the inside of her lip to keep from screaming. She wants to break things and punch things and yell a lot and run away and—

Fuck.

She’s not going to run. She’s attached, now. Beau isn’t Just Beau anymore. She’s Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein, and she’s getting her friends back whatever it takes. For Molly. For attachments. For a family.

A family.

Beauregard Lionett is dead. She died on a mattress in the Cobalt Reserve. But Beau still lives, and she does have a family, and she’s not going to lose any more of them ever again. Maybe they don’t share blood, but she’s prepared to let all of hers spill out if it means protecting them.

Caleb wants to run. But he doesn’t. He stays with her, because he knows they’re a family too. And they fight their way through the Sour Nest and they get their friends back and it’s fine. It’s going to be fine. Molly’s dead and buried but Beau has fabric from his coat tied around her hair and she keeps it as a promise that she won’t let it happen again.

 

* * *

 

 

Beauregard Lionett hated meditating. The rest of it was alright, for the most part; the punching and kicking and stretching and fighting. That was all movement and aggression. But meditation? Sitting, thinking? Fuck that.

Just Beau hated it too. She was free, remember? Like the wind. Always running. Always moving. Never pinned down.

But Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein is different. She’s older, and wiser, and she has a lot to think about. So she climbs atop an ocean rock and meditates with the sea spray misting across her face. She can hear them in the distance, laughing and yelling and getting up to whatever bullshit—her friends. The Nein. _Her family._

It’s nice, here. The ocean is nice. Nicodranas is nice. Beau thinks she could see herself living here, some day.

She thinks about that a lot, as time goes on. Even when she’s been on a ship so long that she starts to hate the ocean, she’s thinking about it. They’d been happy, that day on the beach. She thinks about Caleb, floating free on the waves, momentarily at peace. She thinks of Caduceus with his wet hair hanging like a pink sheet over his face. She thinks of Fjord, grinning and happy in his element. She thinks of Jester’s face when she’d seen her mother again. She thinks of Nott, being brave for all of them, regardless of her fears, smiling triumphantly over the dead body of a crab.

Things are a bit shit all the time, with them. They accidentally become pirates and almost raise an eldritch being and fight a dragon and almost die a lot. They’re reckless, stupid shits, every one of them. But she thinks they’re all better for being around each other. Fjord’s a fucking moron but he’s teaching her how to smile nicer and phrase things so that people will like her. And he lets her be his first mate—no one ever willingly gave Beauregard Lionett responsibility over anything, and Just Beau rejected responsibilities like disease. But Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein takes pride in her new job, because it really drives home that she’s part of something.

They don’t die at sea. That’s good, obviously; Beau may be prepared to die for any of them but she’d really much prefer to stay alive. They don’t die, and they don’t fall apart, and when they get to land, no one leaves. That’s been her fear, lately, that someone will leave. That Fjord will go off the rails or Nott will get fed up with the water or Jester will want to stay with her mother or Caduceus will need to go home or Caleb will be too scared to stay, and that’s not to mention Yasha’s frequent disappearances. But even Yasha stays by their side, once they’re on land again, and it makes Beau feel all warm and fuzzy and reassured.

Gross.

Marion Lavorre gives them a look before they leave. It’s a look that says she knows exactly what they are, knows exactly what it’s taken Beau so long to realize. In a glance, she can already tell that they’re more than a band of mercenaries, more than a group of friends. Her eyes meet Beau and her smile is warm, and her gaze says that she can see Beauregard Lionett and Just Beau and Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein all at once and that she approves of This Beau Now.

Beau smiles back as best she can and goes to hide in the cart next to Caleb. He glances at her briefly and sends Frumpkin to climb into her lap.

And off they go. Towards Felderwin. Towards Kamordah.

_Beauregard. We deemed it appropriate to inform you that your mother has given birth to a son. We hope you are well. -Father and Mother_

Dear Beauregard. We’ve finally replaced you. Don’t bother coming home.

Fjord had asked her if she’d wanted to pass through Kamordah and meet her baby brother. And it’s the weirdest thing, isn’t it? Back when she’d first received the letter, Beau’s stomach had grown hot and tight with anger and a sense of loss for what never was. When she thought about her brother, all she felt was bitterness. But now?

Now she feels nothing. Beauregard Lionett is dead, and Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein has moved on. She doesn’t give a shit about her parents. She doesn’t give a shit about her home. She has a new home on the open road and a new family in a roaming band of misfits. She’s not even all that angry anymore—instead, all she can think is it _just doesn’t matter_.

And her brother? Innocent and on the front line of a war?

She’s not sure. Beauregard Lionett would have resented him. Just Beau would have ignored even the thought of his existence. Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein thinks maybe she’ll want to go see him, someday, if only from afar, if only to know what exactly it is she missed and what exactly she’s leaving behind.

Not right now, though. Right now they have to get to Felderwin, for Nott.

Caleb lets out a little sigh and slumps against her shoulder. Beau glances over in surprise to find that he’s fallen asleep, lulled by the steady movement of the cart. Frumpkin mews softly in her lap and starfishes his paws against her thighs, and Beau can’t help the little smile that springs to her lips.

 _Besides,_ she thinks, _I already have a brother to worry about._ And she glances at Fjord sitting beside Caduceus at the front of the cart and she thinks, _brothers._

Beauregard Lionett is dead and Just Beau has no family. But This-Beau, Beau-Now, has a family that she made herself and she wouldn’t trade them for the world.

 

* * *

 

 

In Felderwin, things go a bit to shit pretty much immediately. Everyone’s mouths are full of secrets and the air is thick and heavy with emotion. Beau holds Caleb’s hand steady on her shoulder and runs her thumb over the button in her pocket, the one Nott had given her all those months ago. Caleb was Bren. Nott was Veth. Nott-Veth has another family, a family that isn’t the Mighty Nein. That isn’t Beau.

It rocks her, for a moment. But Jester has family too, doesn’t she? She has a mother who loves her and she stayed anyway. So it doesn’t matter, because they’re a family and they found each other and they’re not leaving.

But she worries regardless. “Don’t run,” she says to Caleb. Almost pleads. It’s a sign of weakness that she wouldn’t usually allow herself to exhibit but she realizes with sickening certainty that she can’t go back to being Just Beau. She just can’t. She’s This-Beau-Now, Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein. She thinks about Beauregard Lionett and she thinks about Mollymauk Tealeaf and she thinks _I won’t ever let any of you go ever again._ So she reaches out towards Caleb and asks him to stay. “Believe in us, just a little bit,” she says, because Just Beau wouldn’t have become Beau-Of-The-Might-Nein if she hadn’t ever learned belief.

He won’t meet her eyes. But he’s still with them when the sun rises, so it’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright. Whatever secrets the group of them hide from each other, they’re going to be fine, despite their ghosts and despite the war that boils around them.

Beau thinks about how happy they’d been, that day on the beach. Careless. Free.

“I'm sure there's some beach-front property open in Nicodranas," she says. “Maybe if we, you know, work really hard, pull our funds, we can retire.”

“Yeah,” says Jester. “Retire?” says Nott.

And Beau thinks about futures and families, and how she’d never really thought about her future before. That was the job of her parents, whose lectures about future and responsibilities were near constant. Beauregard Lionett hated it, and Just Beau ran from it, but she doesn’t have parents anymore, does she? And Beau-Of-The-Mighty-Nein is free to run towards whichever future she chooses.

So choose she does.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i just love beau okay i just love her a lot
> 
> uhhhhh comment or kudos or visit my [tumblr](https://thepensword.tumblr.com) okay i gotta go watch the new episode now thanks for reading


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